“YOU ARE THE MASTER NOW”
We couldn’t let the 25th birthday of id Software’s phenomenally influential fps Quake go uncelebrated. Leon, Darren, Karl, Jesse and community correspondents rocket jump back to 1996 and nail their colours (various shades of brown) to a rusted mast.
Music featured in this issue:
1. The Hall of Souls by Trent Reznor
2. Quake Theme by Trent Reznor
edited by Jay Taylor
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Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:58:18 — 81.4MB)
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Thanks for the great podcast guys! Really enjoyed the well researched retrospective. I did not know it was now playable in VR, so that’s something I will do as soon as I get a VR setup!
To answer something that came up in the cast: Netquake is the original netcode for the game that everyone started out with. Lag with stuck players was a regular feature of life on our dial-up modems.
At the very end of 1996, Quakeworld – an overhauled TCP/IP netcode – was released. It added prediction code. On the one hand, it made online games feel smoother for slow connections, but on the other – that thing you just saw happen (such as someone being right in front of you as you pulled the trigger), sometimes did not, as the actual inputs of the other player finally arrived over the network.
While the feel of the networking code is a matter of taste, the major sin is that both codes were available simultaneously, but not compatible with one another. This resulted in a split player base which possibly reduced the lifespan of the game (in later years it became progressively harder to find populated servers – a problem that would have probably been delayed with a singular player base).
Thanks for the insight, TiBirD!